Recently a mother asked me for my opinion about the therapy her adult daughter was receiving for the pain and harmful behaviors that had followed a long history of sexual and emotional trauma. I asked how long the daughter had been in therapy, and the mother said, āOh, about five or six years.ā
āAnd how does she seem to be doing?ā I asked. āDoes she live on her own?ā
āNo, she lives with me.ā
āDoes she work?ā
āNo.ā
āIs she going to school?ā
āNo.ā
āHow does she occupy her time?ā
āShe pretty much reads books and watches television at home all day.ā
āSo it doesnāt sound as though the therapy is working all that well.ā
āNo, I suppose it doesnāt.ā
Although I have seen positive results come from therapists who are naturally gifted in loving, on the whole, I compare traditional psychological therapy or counseling to an archaeological dig, where the therapists dig through the dirt, occasionally finding bones and pottery shards, but unable to bring life to anything.
A week later, the mother called me and said, āI just attended one of my daughterās therapy sessions for the first time, and it went exactly as you described. I watched the therapist sift through the dirt of my daughterās past, excited to find bones and artifacts like a mad scientist. But the counselor was treating my daughter like a lab experiment. There was no hope, no life, nothing positive.ā
Sometimes a certain degree of understanding is needed in talking with people about their pain, past, and present. It contributes to the other person feeling connected to the interviewer. On the whole, though, what people really need is healing, which comes only from feeling loved. And on the whole, therapists have no love to offer. They never received any themselves, and in their trainingāalmost without exceptionāthey were never taught how to use it.
We are human beings, who need understanding and healing, not archaeological digs to be shoveled and sifted.